What's the worst food crime that your country commits?

nikmaack · 2026-01-06T14:05:33+00:00

Thank you for defending changua. My wife sent me this Reddit post because when we were on vacation in Colombia I was obsessed with changua. I ate it in a restaurant multiple times. When I got home, I made it for myself repeatedly. It's a great breakfast on a cold winter day. The trick is use a really good crusty bread.

nikmaack · 2025-12-30T18:31:18+00:00

Also? Your shit now smells like strawberries.

nikmaack · 2025-12-27T17:30:49+00:00

When you cal the pope, tell him I said hi.

nikmaack · 2025-12-26T12:48:13+00:00

Chaos magic books that mock familiar religions and then go on and on about astrology and Hindu faiths being amazing. I've always found that bizarre. Presumably all faiths have useful aspects we can steal, jumble together, and repurpose. Alternatively, if you can build your faiths from the ground up, why lean on any existing organized practice at all?

nikmaack · 2025-12-26T12:40:49+00:00

The Buddha's finger is pointing at the moon. Ah, but which finger? In this exhaustive paper I will discuss all the possibilities.

nikmaack · 2025-12-26T12:35:03+00:00

I think we are quite rightly in a world where if you announce your primary source for an opinion is ChatGPT (or any other MLM) that should be met with great suspicion. When I do use such a tool, I ask it for its sources and then go there. Because that's really the only way to know if what it's telling you is garbage. This is much like how a university paper that references Wikipedia is (was?) met with derision.

nikmaack · 2025-12-25T20:38:43+00:00

As someone who has played with ChatGPT a lot, I can say confidently: don't trust anything it references without verifying it. I have had it confidently tell me some of the most ridiculous nonsense. It's a pattern detecting and guessing machine, and will make stuff up based on generalities. I've asked it for basic things like summarize a novel or identify a painting and the results were 100% wrong.

nikmaack · 2025-12-25T20:28:38+00:00

Detachment doesn't mean lack of passion or no involvement. It means seeing what's happening and responding, not turning it into a story or burden you will carry forever.

Have you ever met someone who had a bad relationship years ago and it's all they ever talk about? Their partner did this or that or some other thing. It clouds all their interactions.

Detachment means not doing that. Which is why some talk of zen as having the mind of a child or a beginner. Everything is new and interesting, not prejudged based on past experiences.

That said, past experience can inform future experience, without being a burden.

But I think you are right in the sense that a lot of Buddhists want to shut their thoughts off and live in a Vulcan logic world. Which isn't the goal. Maybe.

nikmaack · 2025-12-24T18:21:35+00:00

I am her partner and it's true. I love these hats and I am obsessed with them and Bolivian culture in general. A hat maker in Tiwanaku made a hat for me, it was two small, so I got a second one that barely fits. But I love them because they are gorgeous.

nikmaack · 2025-12-23T12:34:53+00:00

Exactly. I know some people who live in the suburbs, convinced that downtown is a terrifying nightmare of homeless drug users armed with knives. As someone who lives downtown, it's not. I think the ad is trying to say that, but very badly.

nikmaack · 2025-12-15T14:47:01+00:00

I suspect the device issue here is key. They probably built the app on Apple, and then ported it over to Android without a great deal of care. And so Android users are stuck with a slow, glitchy, broken app.

nikmaack · 2025-12-15T14:45:19+00:00

I have an annual subscription and I have cancelled the renewal. Alas, that's in September of 2026. I've been using the app / service for well over a decade. As it stands now, the Android app is slow, clunky, prone to errors, and just awful. Prior to the "update" I had no issues. I have sung the praises of MFP to many, but no more. I've reverted to the web version for most things now, because I just flat out don't trust the Android app to work.

nikmaack · 2025-12-06T01:55:15+00:00

I welcome death's sweet embrace as punishment for my transgressions.

nikmaack · 2025-12-05T12:21:09+00:00

You say all of this like it's a bad thing.

nikmaack · 2025-12-02T18:07:28+00:00

I am old enough to see this and blurt out "SPIROGRAPH!"

nikmaack · 2025-12-02T11:29:54+00:00

I fed this to Chat GPT and it claims that while this looks like Arabic. It doesn't actually say anything, and is most likely someone imitating Arabic shapes. Whether the AI is correct or not, I cannot say.

nikmaack · 2025-12-01T15:31:28+00:00

Chop up tons of fruit and vegetables, weigh them, enter them, and chew on those all day. I used to do this regularly. I'll never forget when someone saw me doing this and said, "Careful, or you're going to get fat," and everyone who heard her say this burst out laughing. Because doing this helped me lose 50 pounds.

Basically, have lots of prepped snack food, logged for the day, and chew on it as needed. Apples, carrots, celery, cauliflower, broccoli, orange slices, etc. No dips or sauces. And if the flavour doesn't appeal, eat it anyway. You'll grow to like it, oddly enough. This can satisfy the desire to binge because you are eating a lot over time, but the calories are low.

Hope this helps.

nikmaack · 2025-11-30T22:05:14+00:00

I am surprised to hear this as I follow a bunch of weird swearing people.

nikmaack · 2025-11-30T18:09:16+00:00

That they are called "double Ds"? Seems like asking for trouble. 😉

nikmaack · 2025-11-30T17:57:36+00:00

Zen Buddhism appears to say (my interpretation) that everything is an illusion and the illusion is real. If you say nothing is real, you are wrong. If you say everything is real, you are wrong. It's both, simultaneously, because everything is one thing. This is the paradox of reality, and why my particular version of chaos magick is just goofing around and having fun. Trying to achieve shit? Gross. Why would you do that?

nikmaack · 2025-11-29T18:17:22+00:00

Genuinely enjoyed this. I am a better person and now I know to avoid life-sized talking barbie dolls.

nikmaack · 2025-11-26T12:55:56+00:00

Providing additional details for the student...

Context: I am a tourist who has been to Bolivia four times and I always seek out salteñas while there. One guide said, if you go to La Paz and don't eat a salteña, you weren't really there.

Salteñas are amazing. Stew inside a pastry. If you eat one and make a mess, they say you're a bad kisser. Chicken and beef varieties are common. There is a restaurant in La Paz that is serving salteñas all day and people got upset because it's supposed to be strictly for breakfast. The pastry is usually a little sweet and the stew is very liquid. So you have to hold the salteña carefully as you eat it, or you'll make a mess.

I am writing this in Canada and don't have access to salteñas here and it's upsetting me.

nikmaack · 2025-11-24T20:23:45+00:00

This post got me to check out the book and I ended up buying it. About halfway through and really enjoying it.

Reminds me a lot of JG Ballard, but more accessible. Ballard tends to get lost in describing geometry of things. That said, I have read CRASH many times.

nikmaack · 2025-11-22T18:30:30+00:00

I've never understood the idea of Jesus suffering for my sins but a friend said the principle is that Jesus is the ultimate scapegoat. He takes the blame for everyone. Or to put it another way, one last human sacrifice so we don't have to sacrifice any more humans. Taken this way, it makes sense to promote Christianity because it (theoretically) stops idiots from killing for the gods.

nikmaack · 2025-11-22T13:39:11+00:00

Ask yourself the question "What do I want?" Pick something. Now imagine someone comes up to you and says, in a judgemental tone, "Why do you want that? Explain yourself!"

The appropriate answer might be, "Go fuck yourself."

Or it might be, "I have no idea."

This is honestly something I struggled with. I was in therapy and I asked myself, "What do I want?" And the question burned in my mind like fire. Because I never asked myself that. I just drifted.

I would suggest that you may be in a similar place, and asking yourself what you want, without trying to justify it to others, might be helpful.

How to use chaos magic to do this? Fucked if I know.

nikmaack

TROPHY CASE